A gust straight from hell hit us. With the engine still out of gear,
Hirta accelerated to a full 6 knots – the stuff of nightmares.
“It’s a lighthouse, but there’s no light in it,” replied Ros.
“Check the port bow now,” suggested John blandly.
“It’s there,” she said with obvious relief, “I can see the second
structure, but that’s blacked out as well.”
Now that we knew where we were I thanked providence for my
shipmates and decided to go for it.
Chris and John were preparing warps and fenders as we swept
past the eyeless white lighthouse surrounded by breaking seas.
The turn to port at the first dog-leg brought the wind abeam. In
gear now, Hirta stood powerfully across the storm past the
shadowy gallows of the perch sitting on its submerged rock. Not
a glimmer did it offer.
As we bore away in calmer water to shape up for our haven,
the sea subsided completely, but shelter from the wind was
notably absent and Hirta showed no interest in slowing below 4
knots. There was only one dock in Leirvik in those days. It
wasn’t much longer than our boat and, thankfully, was free, but
there was no room to round up and a pile of rocks lay
immediately beyond. Somehow we had to take the way off her as
she blew past the floodlit berth.
Ros and Chris prepared a long stern line, secured the end
inboard and handed the coil to John who nobly volunteered to
jump. I steered as near as I dared to that cruel wall. I couldn’t see a
thing for the arc lights, but John was calling me in.
“Bit closer, closer...Take her out! Out! Out! In a bit. NOW!”
One leap and he was up on the wall. How he made it across what
seemed a five-foot gap from a standing start I’ll never know.
Sky-hook perhaps. I slammed the engine hard astern. The rope was
smoking on a meaty iron bollard as John surged his turn, then it
came bar tight as 35 tons of boat stopped from 4 knots in l0 feet. It
was amazing to me the cavil didn’t rip off the bulwarks. The
Cornish did a good job when they built Hirta back in 1911.
Chris and Ros ran out a bow line and, suddenly, it was all over.
I tottered below, poured myself a large bonded whisky and sloshed
out an even larger one for John. Chris and Ros came down looking
pale in the lamplight. Ros peeped into Hannah’s cabin.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” she said, “but she’s put herself to bed.
She’s lying there as if she’s in the Park Lane Hilton.”
Chris took a swig straight from the bottle, “Blessed are they
who travel in ignorance,” he announced reverently, “for they
shall not know what hit them.”
In the morning we were still puzzling about what happened
to the lights when I found a note in the pilot book. North of a
latitude well down the coast, the Norwegians switch them off
in summer. Another lesson well learned: “Read the pilot
book. You’ve spent enough money on it.”
After breakfast, Chris and John nipped up on deck to
clean the fish. A minute later the saloon skylight hatch
slid back briskly and Chris’s face appeared.
“Guess what? You know that week’s supply of
fish fillets we were going to enjoy? Try this for
size.” He tossed down a classic alley-cat fishbone.
Head and tail untouched, the rest picked as clean
as a boat in frame.
“They’re all the same, or gone,” added John.
“It’s been a moggies’ benefit up here. I heard
the patter of tiny feet early on but I thought it
was rats so I went back to sleep. Why don’t
we just rip yesterday’s page out of the log
book and start again?”
The trouble was, nobody had written
anything the day before, so we inscribed
a date and entered, “Least said,
soonest mended.”